The Clan of the Cave Bear Pilot Ordered at Lifetime

With ABC’s failed 2007 Cavemen sitcom now just a hard-to-fathom memory, Lifetime is taking a big swing at the prehistoric era — with classier source materian than a GEICO ad — by giving a pilot order to The Clan of the Cave Bear, based on Jean M. Auel’s series of best-selling novels.

The Clan of the Cave Bear, the first of Auel’s six-book series, is set 25,000 years ago, “when Neanderthals shared the Earth with the first early modern humans and a band of cave dwellers adopt blond and blue-eyed Ayla,” a courageous young woman who fights against “the jealous bigotry of Broud, who will one day be clan leader,” according to a Lifetime release.

The Clan of the Cave Bear was previously adapted as a feature film in 1986, starring Daryl Hannah.

Ahhhhhhhh! I’m so excited. This is the best news. Ever. This book series is one of my favourite. 16 years ago I read the first book and ever since have had an interest in Pre-historic people. I have probably read close to 4000 books (I was a big bookworm from about 1990 to 2009) and the story of Ayla and Jondular sticks out for me. Hopefully Lifetime can pull it off well. The movie was a bit lacking but it is a fairly difficult book to bring to film. After all, there are no Neanderthals left on earth and much of the book is non-verbal.

This was assigned reading back in high school and I loved it. I read some of the sequels, but I feel like they became unreadable at a point. I would love to see this adapted as a high quality TV series (i.e., Game of Thrones level). Ayla is one of the best female characters in fiction.